Santiago Uribe, the brother of Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe met with assumed dead paramilitary leader Vicente Castaño, AUC commander “El Aleman” testified before court.
According to newspaper El Espectador, Freddy Rendon Herrera, alias “El Aleman” said that Uribe met with Castaño and Raul Hazbun, a north Colombian businessman who mediated between the paramilitaries and banana company Chiquita, that has been convicted in the U.S. for financially supporting the paramilitary organization.
El Aleman told the court that Hazbun had told him the meeting between Uribe and Castaño, who was in charge of the paramilitary organization’s drug trafficking operations.
Newspaper El Tiempo on Thursday reported that the paramilitary leader also accused “emerald czar” Victor Carranza of financially suporting the AUC.
Jaime Granados, defense attorney of Uribe, told the newspaper the testimony was El Aleman was false and requested the former leader of the Elmer Cardenas Bloc to be exluded from the Justice and Peace law that allows paramilitary commander milder sentences in exchange for their testimonies and reparation of their victims.
Uribe is also investigated of being a member of paramilitary group “the Twelve Apostles,” that was active in the north of the Antioquia department where the Uribe family has economis interests.
According to testimonies by some prominent former paramilitaries, Castaño was murdered. These stories are denied by others.
